Enrique Bolanos Geyer

Enrique José Bolaños Geyer (Nindirí, May 13, 1928-Ib., June 14, 2021) was a Nicaraguan engineer, politician, and businessman. He was President of the Republic of Nicaragua from January 10, 2002 to January 10, 2007.

After being hospitalized since August 2020 for unknown reasons at the request of his family, Bolaños passed away at the age of 93, according to a statement made by his relatives on the Facebook account of the virtual library that bears his name.

Studies and facet as an entrepreneur

He was the third child of four sons born to Nicolás Bolaños Cortés and Amanda Geyer Abaunza. He was of Spanish descent through his father's family, being from Cádiz, while his maternal family was of German descent. He received his school training in various parochial schools. He received business training in the agro-industrial field, completing it with a Bachellor in Arts in engineering at Saint Louis University in Missouri (United States), and later completed a Senior Management Program Taught by the Central American Institute of Business Administration (INCAE) for the training of future executives and presidents of corporations.

In 1949, he married his second cousin: Lila T. Abaunza, a member of one of the most distinguished families in the country. The Bolaños-Abaunza couple had five children.

The Bolaños have been one of the influential families in the Central American nation linked to the historic Liberal Party, divided among supporters of Somocism. After the division of the Nationalist Liberal Party (PLN), the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC) was born, founded in 1968 by former minister Ramiro Sacasa Guerrero as an opposition force to the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, in which Bolaños developed most of his political activities..

Political activity

Bolaños' entry into Nicaraguan politics occurred in 1979, the year of the triumph of the revolution led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). He was then elected president of the Association of Oriente Cotton Growers (ADADO), director of the Union of Agricultural Producers of Nicaragua (UPANIC) and director of the Chamber of Industries of Nicaragua (CADIN).

In the following decade, the Bolaños business group was subjected to expropriations of farms by the Sandinista regime as part of the ongoing agrarian reform, as well as confiscations of manufacturing plants. He was briefly imprisoned on three occasions accused of violating the emergency laws implemented in the lee of the civil war against the Contra guerrillas. Until the end of the Sandinista period, Bolaños was in charge of the Nicaraguan Development Institute (INDE).

The PLC chose its candidate for the primaries that the National Opposition Union (UNO) contested in September 1989 to define Ortega's opponent in the general elections of February 25, 1990, decisive for democratic normalization and the end of the civil war. However, Bolaños was outdone by two ideologically more moderate UNO figures, Virgilio Godoy Reyes, of the Independent Liberal Party, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, owner of the newspaper La Prensa and for years the visible head of the response to the Sandinistas from institutional legality.

Under the leadership of Arnoldo Alemán, the PLC raised serious objections to Chamorro's management, considered condescending towards the Sandinistas, and in 1993 he ended up leaving UNO and placing himself in opposition to the president.

On October 4, 1995, Bolaños became head of the electoral campaign of the AL (Liberal Alliance) and on May 8, 1996, the AL (Liberal Alliance) elected him a candidate for the Vice Presidency of the Republic, seconding Alemán. The Alemán-Bolaños ticket prevailed with 51% of the votes over the Ortega-Caldera ticket, and on January 10, 1997, the elected candidates took office for a five-year term. Bolaños specified that the priorities of the new administration were going to be an honest management of public affairs and the fight against corruption, the search for legal solutions regarding the lands confiscated in the Sandinista period, and the general disarmament of the north of the country.

Bolaños Geyer was an Honorary Member of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.^{[citation required]}

Vice Presidency of the Republic (1997-2000)

In Alemán's government, Bolaños maintained a discreet profile, both due to the limited powers of the post and his personality. Far from the front line, he projected himself before public opinion as a dignitary attached to the rules of the rule of law and the democratic game, as well as an honest man, a virtue that gained relief as other members of the executive, with Alemán the head, were accused of corruption.

While Alemán had to renounce many of his economic proposals in the face of the belligerence of the FSLN in the opposition, from the Vice Presidency Bolaños promoted the Public Sector Reform and Modernization Program, which went ahead as a project Of law. He also inspired the decrees on Norms of Ethics of the Public Servant of the Executive Power and on Separation of the Functions of the Attorney General's Office .

During the national emergency caused by Hurricane Mitch in October 1998, which caused a thousand deaths and devastated extensive agricultural areas, Bolaños was a government delegate for aid management. Subsequently, he drafted and promulgated the Law of the National System for Prevention, Mitigation and Attention to Natural Disasters .

A trusted person of the increasingly discredited Aleman, Bolaños was unanimously elected pro-government candidate for the Presidency of the Republic at the Great PLC Convention held on Sunday, January 28, 2001.

Although considered an upright and competent public servant, Bolaños was far from a charismatic politician, and his performance as vice president was considered by many to have been timid to say the least.

Candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic

The polls gave Daniel Ortega great chances of victory^{[citation needed]}, benefited in part from the widespread discontent that the German management had created, and his calls responsibility, national consensus and overcoming the past. On the contrary, Bolaños adopted a confrontational tone and found a gold mine in the "conversion" of the former president, who surprised locals and strangers^{[citation required]}.

Bolaños rebuked Ortega that his erroneous decisions and authoritarian excesses had "destroyed" the country in the 1980s, he insinuated that he had profited from revolutionary requisitions and demanded that she explain his dealings with radical leftist leaders such as Cuba's Fidel Castro, Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.

He warned that Nicaragua could not afford a president who was friendly to leaders who were the object of censorship and suspicion, and who in his first term had turned the country into a "haven for terrorists" of the Basque ETA, the Italian Red Brigades and subversive groups in America.

His electoral program, entitled governance, democracy and transparency: many challenges, two options, one alternative, emphasized job creation and development.^{[ citation needed]} The Sandinistas, aware of the damage that the discourse of fear was doing to Ortega, replied that Bolaños was nothing but the "candidate of the rich" on duty and a mere continuator of Germanism.

The two leading candidates went into the polls virtually tied in the polls. Bolaños prevailed with a resounding 56.3% of the votes over Ortega, who received 42.3%. Alberto Saborío, from the Conservative Party, got 1.4% and 3.er place of the vote. In the National Assembly, the PLC received 53.2% of the votes, which translated into 47 seats, just the absolute majority. The 3,000 international observers endorsed the absolute cleanliness of the elections.^{[citation required]}

President of the Republic (2002-2007)

On January 10, 2002, he took office as head of the Nation with a mandate until 2007 in the presence of several presidents of the region and around 500 entrepreneurs and businessmen from 28 countries, invited to demonstrate their conviction that the country was attractive to foreign investment.

Bolaños made the most ostensible distancing from Alemán a few days after being proclaimed president-elect with his announcement that he proposed to revise the Constitution to end the distribution of positions in the branches of the State, protected by law, between liberals and Sandinistas.

Before taking office, Bolaños declared that he would "beg" if necessary, the support of the deputies loyal to former president Alemán, who won the seat because they were part of the electoral proposal that he led and led to victory.

However, the Germanists scored their first victory on the very eve of the transfer of the presidential band when 49 deputies elected Óscar Moncada as president of the National Assembly over the candidate proposed by Bolaños, Jaime Cuadra Somarriba. In January 2007, he was replaced in the presidency by Ortega himself, winner of the previous year's elections.

The ministers of the government of Enrique Bolaños who remained throughout his term were: Norman Caldera (Foreign Relations) Julio Vega (Government) Margarita Gurdián (Health) Avil Ramírez (Defense), Mario Salvo (Agriculture) and Ramón Lacayo (Investments and Economy).

Enrique Bolaños reportedly ordered the compilation of a list of "suspected"public officials; of being part of the "gay-lesbian world".

In November 2006, he proposed a vote in Parliament for the total ban on abortion, setting the sentences at thirty years in prison.

According to investigations by a Spanish newspaper, Bolaños Geyer received 1.2 million dollars from the current account deposited in Panamanian banks by the government of Taiwan, the beneficiary of which was the PLC. During his tenure, he refused to inform the Comptroller General of the Republic on the administration and application of the millions of dollars that the government of Taiwan donated for his electoral campaign, which was the reason for a sanction by the Comptroller, first of two to three salaries withheld from his position as President and to the continuous contempt of the comptroller body, this resolved in a final sentence, the separation from his position as president of the republic and since he did not have a superior hierarchy, the mandate would be directed to the Legislative Assembly.

Bolaños left office on January 10, 2007, and the country plunged into its worst energy crisis, open unemployment of 13% and galloping underemployment of 45%, unable to contain the migratory wave of Nicaraguans to Costa Rica or United States and with the foreign debt representing 316 percent of Nicaragua's exports. of approximately 90,000 córdobas of those collected from the State.

He died on June 14, 2021 at his home on the outskirts of Managua at the age of 93. He was buried in the family crypt of the Monimbó cemetery.

Predecessor: Arnoldo Alemán

President of Nicaragua 10 January 2002 - 10 January 2007

Successor: Daniel Ortega